White Heat might be one of the more lesser-known “movie classics” that I’ve reviewed, but if you research around you’ll find it on a lot of “best of all time” lists. I first discovered it on IMDB’s Top 250 movies list. Anyway, the movie has gone down as one of the best gangster movies ever, and was most likely a huge influence for movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas that followed. Despite all of this, I’m not that big of a fan of it personally.

The movie is about gangster Cody Jarrett, who leads a group of men to pull off heists. After a heist in the opening scene, Cody begins to get a bit more police attention than he was hoping for. He works out a way to confess a crime that will only put him in jail for a year or two, instead of going down for some of his more sinister crimes. While in jail, multiple things begin to happen. Cody’s trying to get out of jail, his mother is trying to keep his organization continuing, his wife and another member of the team are plotting to overtake him, and a cop goes undercover in prison to try to pin him down for something more serious. There admittedly is a lot of layers going on here, so I understand why some people are really into it.

And for what it’s worth, White Heat is mostly a good movie. It has a lot going for it, most notably being the main character of Cody Jarrett. I mean this both in terms of the character’s personality, and also the performance from James Cagney in bringing the character to life. He’s a really compelling lead, and one thing I found interesting is that he’s not a very redeemable character. A lot of times in movies like this I’m usually rooting for the main character despite them being bad people on some level, but Cody is just a real bastard, and that’s fascinating. I also think that the movie is shot really well. It has some excellent camera work for 1949, and it makes it a lot more accessible. The movie definitely has some interesting parts, and so I don’t think it’s bad by any means.

I just didn’t really fully enjoy it. While I liked the main character, I just wasn’t really all that into the story. I feel like it runs into that problem where it paves the way for future movies like it, but having seen those future movies and what they do with it, this movie just feels like a template for them and comes off as a bit more generic because of it. It just hasn’t aged well in that regard, and so while it has a lot of interesting ideas in it, they never felt fully realized for me. Also, the movie just feels way too long. It clocks in at under 2 hours, but it feels much longer. There were just some boring stretches, and I think if the movie was trimmed down a bit it could be a lot tighter of an experience.

White Heat is one of those movies that I’m just a bit too “middle-of-the-road” on. I acknowledge that it has a lot going for it, and so it has too many redeeming qualities for me to consider it to be a bad movie. However, on the same token, I just didn’t enjoy it all that much, so I don’t really consider it to be a good movie either. I understand how it gained its classic status, but I just don’t personally see it myself. I think that it was a good attempt that helped pave the way for better movies, but it just doesn’t hold up as a particularly great movie. It’s worth watching, but I don’t really care to ever see it again.

3/5